“Flora & Fauna,” an exhibition featuring encaustic artists Debra Claffey, Patricia Gerkin, Kellie Weeks and Charyl Weissbach, will be held from January 7 through February 18 at The Brush Art Gallery & Studios, 256 Market St., Lowell, Massachusetts. Claffey focuses on the plant world, celebrating its beauty of form, shape, and infinite color. Gerkin challenges viewers “to note that space where two worlds meet—outer and inner” with her intuitive process allowing her materials (paint sticks, encaustic, metal leaf and disparate materials), to organically lead the way. While using encaustics “for their insurmountable quality, depth and brilliancy,” Weeks also incorporates dry pigments, metal leaf, shellac and other mixed media as vehicles to develop a whole lexicon of imagery. Weissbach, painting with pigment sticks and encaustic, explores nature’s vastness and the details found within it; her Baroque series depicts similar depths and details of nature. An artist reception is scheduled for January 14 from 2-4 p.m. with a snow date the following afternoon.
Fountain Street, 460 Harrison Ave. #C2, in Boston’s SoWa District, presents “In Search of…,” featuring the work of the gallery’s Associate Members Clare Asch, John Baker, Jim Banks, Sorin Bica, Katherine Borkowski-Byrne, Kathline Carr, Sandra Cohen, John Daly,Susan Greer Emmerson, Sara Fine-Wilson, Bob Hesse, Meghan Mirasolo,Pat Paxson, Catherine Picard-Gibbs, Jill Pottle, Anne Sargent Walker, Marcia Wise and Leslie Zelamsky from January 19 through February 26 with an artist reception on Friday, February 3 from 5-8 p.m. The exhibition, curated by Joseph Fontinha and Lior Neiger, includes painting, photography, sculpture and mixed media that convey “the multitude of ways in which artists search, re-search, convey and present their ‘findings,’ be it what they were looking for or what they found.’”
Fenway Gallery, 30 Ipswich St., Boston, Massachusetts, opened last May; managing director Beverly Sky said its “mission/vision is to provide a showcase for emerging artists in Boston especially from our Fenway Arts District institutions such as Mass Art, Boston Arts Academy, Tufts Museum School and Boston University. Its next exhibition, “BODYSCAPES,” takes place from January 21 through April 15 and features the artwork of Logan Heilman (who curated the show), Ricky Vasan, Shoni Hallock-Martin and Nancy Aleo. “Only artists would build and open a nonprofit gallery (located at Fenway Studios) in the midst of a pandemic, but we did it,” Sky said.
All 5,500 square feet of gallery space at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA), 21 Winter St., Rockland, Maine, will be in use for the 2023 CMCA Biennial exhibition taking place from January 28 through May 7. Billed as the longest-running statewide juried exhibition in Maine, it promises to highlight the latest developments in contemporary art by 35 Maine-based and connected artists. Misa Jeffereis, assistant curator at the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri and Sarah Montross, senior curator at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum selected the participants from 423 entrants. “The museum-wide exhibition will showcase an exceptional variety of artworks created over the past two years that will span all artist media, including installation-based and commissioned artworks.”
Phyllis Ewen’s first solo exhibition, “Shifting Currents/Deep Water Rising,” a collection of works that she hopes will convey the effects of global warming and human intervention on our oceans, is on view from February 1 through 26 at Kingston Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave. #43, Boston, Massachusetts. Ewen’s imagined topographical waterscapes, such as “The Sea is Boiling” and “Drift” — 3D sculptural collages she creates by scanning maps and charts and altering them in Photoshop before turning the end result into high quality pigment prints — are intended to highlight the changing nature of our seas through rising waters and melting glaciers.
“Double Vision,” is a series of lithographs based on dual imagery—imagery by Donna S. Gordon that mirrors, opposes or transposes pieces of itself to offer the viewer a new perspective, will be on view from February 3 through 26 at Galatea Fine Art, 460 Harrison Ave. #B-6, Boston. “The images are primarily made from my black-and-white photographs transformed into paper lithography via liquid gum Arabic and put through the press.” The show will also include a handful of her monotypes.
Curator Ellen Hawley has brought together abstract artists Ryan Crotty, Susan Meyer, Linda Kamille Schmidt and Audrey Stone for “GLOW,” an exhibition where 2D and 3D artworks will intersect with themes of color, transparency, process and materiality with ambient light playing upon color illuminating artworks that appear to glow, pulsate and float in space from February 9 through March 22 at the Flinn Gallery at Greenwich Library, 101 West Putnam Ave., Greenwich, Connecticut. Visitors will be invited to “lean in and examine the close relationship between colors — the subtle gradations of one shade, and the way hues and material can be deceptive.”
“A Place of Inspiration: Images that Capture the Spirit of Lynn,” a retrospective exhibition featuring the work of Yetti Frenkel, who has been painting scenes of everyday life in Lynn and the North Shore for 40 years, remains on view through April 30 at the Lynn Museum, 590 Washington St., Lynn, Massachusetts. “The affection that Yetti Frenkel feels for the characters she portrays is evident. Images range in emotion from the delight of children riding in a shopping cart to the desolation of a young man overdosed on a commuter-rail platform. Each scene has a quality of vitality and an implied narrative, like the chapters of a book that everyone can read, finding themselves reflected in the stories. There is empathy in the images, and a deep desire to connect with the viewer.”
Brian Goslow